


Magnificence in Simplicity

by princeymarmar



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo | Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem
Genre: Agender Character, Fire Emblem Trans Winter Exchange, Gen, Gender Journeys, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28331115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princeymarmar/pseuds/princeymarmar
Summary: Rody has never understood gender distinctions. He's been the cook, sewer, caretaker of his family for so long; what is the point of having them, anyway?It runs deeper than that, of course. But if he doesn't think about it, then it doesn't exist.Right?
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11
Collections: Fire Emblem Trans Winter Exchange 2020





	Magnificence in Simplicity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jonphaedrus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/gifts).



> Merry Christmas and a happy Trans Winter Exchange! I am hoping this is not late but it is still Christmas where I am, so.
> 
> The prompt I ended up going for "favorite minor/side character and how they are trans". I had a lot of thoughts on this one. Lots of different characters I could have written for. Arthur fe4 is a trans man was high on the list of considerations, because of course he was. But the note included with the prompt mentioned nonbinary Navarre, and I thought to myself, I have a nonbinary Archanea headcanon! Multiple headcanons, in fact!
> 
> But Kris isn't a minor character, and I have written for Xane many times before. So I went challenge mode: I wrote my old favorite who I have not written for in so long, Rody. I first played the Archanea games when I was JUST coming to terms with being trans, in a sort of limbo where I knew I wasn't cis but hadn't yet accepted I was a trans man. When I got to Rody saying "Why make a fuss over gender distinctions?" (at least in my version of the English Patch), I went "oh that is not a thing you'd say if you weren't gendering" and put on my horse blinders to everything else.
> 
> It's maybe a little short on actual content where he acknowledges himself as nonbinary, but it is about the journey. And there's other trans characters in here, too!
> 
> Anyways. Merry Christmas, hope you enjoy!

He learns how to bake from his mother. They start when he's so young that he can't even remember a time when his hands didn't know how to knead dough, sift flour, measure ingredients. It's a memory older than even the first time he held his oldest baby sister.

He learns to sew on his own because it's practical, and his father is too busy and tired from working the farm and his mother has a baby to care for. His mother keeps a tired eye on him as she nurses his sister, enough to make sure he doesn't stab himself because he's doing needlework at age _five._

He learns to care for babies because _someone_ needs to help mother, so she has time to sleep and cook and clean. His second sister comes only two years after the first, and his third sister only two years after that.

His mother dies in childbirth, and his father grows cold from grief, throwing himself into farmwork to provide for three children. Rody is left adrift with grief of his own. But he has three baby sisters who need to be cared for, baby sisters who do not at all understand what has happened. So he feeds them, changes the youngest, cleans the house, makes and patches all their clothes for them. He patches and repatches his own clothes until they're nothing but patches, short on his arms, threadbare.

* * *

There are few other children anywhere close to his age, where he lives. When he's twelve and his oldest sister is eight, he meets some boys who are sixteen, who mostly help with their family's farms.

"Don't you help your dad, too?" one asks him. Rody bristles and doesn't know why.

"Of course I help him. I take care of our old mare, and I help garden," he answers, voice even and calmer than he feels.

"But do you help with the plowing and the planting?" another one asks.

Rody frowns, and shrugs. "As much as I can. But I've got my sisters to care for, too. Someone needs to feed them, keep the house clean."

"How old are your sisters?"

"The oldest is eight. They're all two years apart."

The first boy's brow furrows. "Can't they do it?"

"...What?"

"Why, keep the house clean, start learning to cook for themselves! I'm sure your father could use your muscle way more than they need your care."

It didn't sit right with Rody. It didn't sit right at all, but he let them walk away without saying anything. At dinner, he sets the table for everyone, pulls out their chairs for them to sit. He doesn't say anything to his father until after he's put his sisters to bed. He only barely manages to catch the man before he retreats to his bedroom.

"Dad?"

His father pauses in the doorframe, as though weighing whether or not he wants to answer. After a long moment, he turns back to Rody. "What is it?"

Rody swallows. "Would… would you rather if I helped you in the fields more?"

His father balks, frowning. "What ever gave you that idea? I need you here, to take care of your sisters."

Rody's shoulders slump with relief. He's _useful_ , he's doing something that helps his family. This is what his father _wants_ from him. "Oh… I just saw some boys today, who talked about how they helped on the fields."

He thinks for a moment, in the dim candlelight, that his father's frown deepens. "...And would you like to?"

Rody pauses a long time, considering. He wants to say yes - wants to be helpful as best he can - but finds that he cannot honestly say it. Honesty and duty, two virtues in conflict, and he cannot uphold them both.

He must have been silent for too long, because his father shakes his head, and ruffles Rody's hair in a way he hadn't since Rody's mother had died. "You're a good kid, Rody." He withdraws, the ghost of a smile still on his face, and shakes his head again.

Then he turns to go into his room, and mutters under his breath. "If a bit of an odd one."

With that, the door shuts cold in Rody's face, and he is left unable to ask what his father had meant.

* * *

The years go by. He lives through a war, an occupied country, a famine, a reclamation by the young prince Marth. He grows into a teen. Other boys and young men talk about the girls they love, pretty lasses and their dresses for spring festivals. Rody has never seen a girl at these festivals and felt the same giddy churning in his stomach that other boys describe. Once he saw a girl in muddy farm clothes and a calf slung over her shoulder and felt something flutter. Traders roll by the farm and one of the older boys in the caravan shoots him a grin before shouldering one of their heavy packs, and he feels it again.

This, he knows, is a dangerous thing to feel. So he pushes it down, down, and wonders if something in him is broken when those nearby farmboys, now twenty, ask him if he's had any crushes and guffaw in disbelief when he shakes his head.

The year he's to turn eighteen, he tells his father that he wants to become a knight in the Altean army. He’s learned to ride on their old mare, can wield a laundry pole as good as a proper spear - and, most importantly, his sisters are definitely old enough to care for themselves and the house now. Besides, it's a way to earn money, put more food on the table. His father gives his blessing with a shrug and “if that’s what you wish”, and Rody wonders why there’s a glimmer of relief in his eyes.

* * *

He rides off for the capital in spring. He’s halfway to the capital when he runs into someone else, a young man around his age with green hair and well-polished armor. All hopes that this will be a new friend are swiftly dashed when Luke asks if he can call him Patches, after his jacket, and wonders aloud of there will be any “lay-deez” (his own pronunciation, with emphasis on the _deez_ ) enlisting. After that, Rody decides that if he had one iota less patience, he would probably have strangled the guy then and there.

Luke both does and doesn’t talk about himself much. He talks himself up whenever they have to stop overnight in a town, bragging about his accomplishments and good qualities to anyone who’d listen, but he stays silent about much else. The second town they stop in, he buys Rody a new jacket and a new mare, and shrugs it off like the expense isn’t anything to him at all. Rody is torn between gratitude and embarrassment. The answer to which will win lies in the reason Luke did it. Luke thumps Rody on the back and jokes that now he'll catch the eyes of more ladies with his handsome fit, but that's all it is: a joke.

He never will find out if this was motivated by kindness or pity.

* * *

In the capital, they are paired together as trainees. They are joined shortly after by a third, a girl with long blue hair tied back in a ponytail, whose first partner had failed the entry test _spectacularly_. "Oh, joy," she mutters as she sees the team they're about to face in a mock battle. "My brother's with them. They're _only_ the best swordsman I know, other than myself…"

Rody's brow furrows; he wants to ask what she means when she calls her brother _they_ , but it's too late. The mock battle begins, and Luke charges ahead when he wasn't supposed to, and then both he and Rody are eliminated from combat, and only Kris is left with her brother. They spar for a while, evenly matched, blow for blow and parry for parry. Even the tiny archer with the green bowlcut stays back, arrow nocked but unfired, transfixed by their battle. Rody wonders if it might never end, when suddenly Kris' brother manages to finally catch her and send her reeling onto her backside.

There's a moment's pause, but even as victory is declared in the other team's favor, both Kris and her brother burst into laughter. "Asshole," Kris tells them as she straightens up, dusting herself off. The corners of their lips twitch, and they give her a slightly crooked grin.

"All's fair in love and war, dear sister. It's not my fault if you get distracted by showing off for a pretty woman."

There's a squeak somewhere behind them, and Rody catches a glimpse of purple hair and purple clothes - the mysterious third member of the other team. Kris' brother had all but carried their entire team; the archer had only managed to land a few hits, and the third person had stayed on the sidelines watching, directing.

Kris flusters and shoves her brother, and Rody wonders what world they're living in that they feel so free to just _say_ these things.

"Oh, shove it, Chris."

"Wait," says Luke, only just now beginning to stand back up. "You're both named _Kris?_ "

The two siblings turn to stare at him. "Uh, yeah," says Kris, smugly.

"It's short for Christopher," says Chris.

"And Kristiansen," says Kris, considerably less smug.

"Aren't those both boy's names?" Luke asks, brow furrowing. Kris shrugs and scowls.

"We're identical twins. Our parents died before they ever could know they had a daughter."

"We both like the nickname better than our full name," Chris adds. "It's fairly neutral, I think."

"Oh," says Luke, and somehow it's as simple as that - he never questions it again, never seems to think about it further, even tries to flirt with Kris before she lets him know in no uncertain terms that she's only into other women.

Rody thinks about it often. He wonders how Kris and Chris could say these things so easily, so openly. Kris flirts with Katarina, Chris flusters any time Marth is brought up. Kris says she's a woman and so she is. Chris feels nothing towards gender and so they use _they_ and so, too, does everyone else who refers to them.

He wonders what sort of courage it must take. Things like that needed to be kept a secret, kept safe, kept locked deep down inside - and yet here they are, living in the open, respected by everyone. It's paradoxical.

Then he wonders about _why_ he's wondering, and then _that_ thought process is swiftly shut down.

* * *

Their group becomes the Seventh Platoon, and they are joined not long after by Cecil. Cecil makes Rody's heart beat in a way that feels _safe_. She's rough and tumble, assertive, takes no shit, _strong_. He could take her back to his family. His father would be pleased that he was settling down. His sisters would be so excited to meet a real knight, especially the middle one, who always talked about wanting to follow in his footsteps-

But they keep clashing in unexpected ways. Rody tries to be polite, courteous, in the way he was raised to be. He tries to give her his chair when she arrives slightly late to a war council, only for her to confront him later because she's angry about receiving "special treatment" for "being a woman, and therefore seen as weak".

"But it's _not_ because she's a woman, and I certainly don't think she's weak," he tells the Krises later in the evening, head in his hands at the table while they clean up from dinner. "I'd do that for anyone. Well, I wouldn't do it for Luke. But if it - if it were you, Chris, or Ryan, or, or-"

Chris gives their sister a look, sets aside their dishtowel, and slides into the bench next to Rody. "That may be. But Cecil is proud, and it sounds like she has a very different perception of the situation. _You_ know that you'd do the same thing if it were anyone else, but does she? And even if she does, it still doesn't change the way it looks to everyone _else_ \- and that may wound her pride even more."

"But why?" Rody asks, finally lifting his head from his hands to look at Chris. "Why would anyone see anything different about me offering my chair to Cecil than they would if I offered it to you? If I would do it for anyone, then why should it be a problem?" He pauses, frowning deeper. "Why should gender distinctions impact this at all? I just want to show her that I care."

"...Gender is a construct," says Chris, after a long and thoughtful pause, "but it's still a construct that _exists_. And sometimes that construct means more to other people-" they gesture at their sister "-than it does to us."

They give Rody a long look, and pat him on the back. "I know it might be hard, not giving in to manners ingrained in you since birth, but it seems in this case that 'politeness' makes her more uncomfortable than 'impoliteness'. And perhaps it's just me, but I think sometimes it's better to be socially impolite in a way that makes others comfortable, than completely polite in a way that makes them _uncomfortable_."

With that, they stand back up and return to drying the dishes, leaving him to wonder what Chris had meant by _us._

* * *

He apologizes to Cecil again later, with a slightly better understanding of how he had hurt her and a plate of cookies. "I'm sorry for brushing you off earlier, too," he says, weighing his words carefully. "It just… it truly hadn't ever occurred to me, that gender could play a part in how my actions were perceived. It was just ordinary politeness back home. But I understand now, and I realize that - it's not just about my intentions, but your own perception. And even though I didn't intend to, I still hurt you, and - and your feelings are what matter, more than my own intentions."

Cecil looks up at him from the bench she's sitting on, one eyebrow raised. "And you also decided to bribe me with cookies."

Rody flinches. "I thought it would be nice…"

"I'm not actually complaining here," Cecil says quickly, finishing off her first cookie and starting on the next. "They're real good. Where did you get them, anyway?"

Rody shrugs. "I made them."

Cecil stops mid-crunch, and coughs. "You _made_ them!?"

Rody frowns and tilts his head. "Yes…? Is it really so surprising? Doesn't everyone know how to cook?"

"The Krises don't," Cecil points out, and Rody shudders at the memory of charred food. "And I sure as hell don't, either. Where did you even _learn?_ I thought cooking was the sort of thing guys got strange about and generally deemed to be women's work."

Rody shifts, uncomfortable and unsure of why. "My family was poor. And my mother died when I was young - too young for my sisters to know how. So, I did all of the cooking, and the sewing, and - all of the housework, really."

Cecil slowly sets both plate and half eaten cookie aside, and pats the bench beside her. Rody's shoulders are shaking. He doesn't know when they started, but they refuse to stop. He sits next to her.  
They're both silent for a very long time. Eventually, Cecil speaks. "I had no idea, either, Rody." She turns to look at him. "I'm not good with the feelings thing, and I don't know how to comfort you if you need it, so I'll start with this: I still don't want you giving up your seat for me. Even though I understand where you're coming from now, and know you don't mean anything by it, I don't want anyone else to be thinking anything because of it."

She pauses. "But I also want to apologize for assuming. It sounds like… you and I had very different upbringings. And I'm sorry if I sounded like I was saying you were womanly or something, for knowing how to cook. Again, _I_ don't know, and Kris doesn't either, and while some people might be considered woman's work, they really are skills anyone can learn. You're not less of a man for it."

Cecil was right about not knowing how to comfort people.

She stares at him for a moment longer, and then frowns. "Unless you don't _want_ to be a man?"

Rody damn near falls off the bench. "What?" he asks, followed swiftly by "I don't want to be a woman either."

Cecil rolls her eyes. "I never said _that_. Rody, our _Platoon leader_ doesn't have a gender - you do realize there's more options than just man and woman, right?"

Rody hesitates. "I - don't get me wrong, it's fine for Chris," he says, and then hurries past with more words when her brow starts to furrow, "they're perfectly fine and I would never - I'd never want to imply otherwise." He pauses, breathes. "But it's different. It'd be different, for me. It's too… dangerous. You don't tell people these things. So I can't - I just can't be. It can't be me, I can't be like Chris."

Cecil is silent for a long moment, before gripping his shoulder. "You really think that transphobia would fly under our beloved and very much trans Prince Marth, who appointed the openly agender person as captain of his Royal Guard?"

Rody gives her a bewildered look. "Marth is trans!?"

Cecil nods slowly, like she's explaining to a child. "Yes? Had you really not heard? It caused quite the stir when he first came out. I guess you would've been six and maybe just didn't understand, but like… Marth is trans, and everyone knows this, and everyone still loves the hell out of him. Times are changing, opinions are, people are opening up to new ideas."

She shifts closer. "If nothing else, or if you think it might be dangerous back home, you can at least admit it to yourself, The rest of the Platoon, too. I mean, if you're not cis, then that means over half the Platoon isn't cis, either, and I've never known Luke or Ryan to have a fit about it."

Rody does a quick run-through in his head of every member of the Platoon, then shoots Cecil a quizzical look. She spreads herself out over the rest of the bench, leaning her head on her hand. "Yeah, I've definitely got a relationship with womanhood. It's a fun one! Sometimes, when I'm feeling scandalous, I refer to myself with 'he' and 'him'. It's especially fetching amongst-" and here her face shifts, contorting into an Expression that makes Rody recoil because he knows what she's about to say next "-the _lay-deez_."

"Please. Dear Naga. Never imitate Luke again," he says, doing a full body shudder. But Cecil is laughing, and so he laughs, too. And as he lets go and admits to himself that maybe he does _not_ have any particular attachment to gender, he does feel better.


End file.
